Cally's War lota-6

by John Ringo

  This one was in the middle of the busiest section of the Corridor he could find. There was so much visual noise here with all the other people passing that no particular pedestrian would ever remember him. Not that anybody but the Bane Sidhe would be looking, and by the time they were, he’d be long gone.

  He had really wanted to spend his retirement on Earth — the amenities were so much better, even when one was perforce keeping a low profile. Oh, well, things were how they were.

  Dulain was a good planet. One of the first colonized by humans, and it had some hazards, but it also had a good belt of very pleasant islands. Not too great a place to work as a penniless colonist. But just fine for someone with a nice nest egg. And a ship was leaving at nineteen-thirty on Tuesday. Perfect. It only took him a few moments to transfer the funds from his numbered accounts to numbered accounts on Dulain. He’d opened an account on Titan with some of the cash from his payoff. The rest he had, unfortunately, had to deposit in a public locker, taking his chances. Still, the important part about the cash was the ability to buy his outbound ticket under an uncompromised ID.

  And he’d never have to eat another soybean corn dog again. Ever.

  Titan Base, Saturday, June 15, late afternoon

  The newsstand on the corner of level eight and hallway Romeo on the Corridor had a good solid range of over the counter medications, including several popular diet mixes that were mostly diuretics. Cally picked the distinctive orange and yellow package because this particular diuretic combination was not just fast acting, it was also mostly tasteless and the effective dose was small. A beer would be enough to hide the very mild taste, even from someone like her.

  I hate drugging him at all. The least I can do is set it up so what I give him is as harmless as possible. Well, embarrassing, maybe, if he doesn’t run fast enough. Still, that’s as harmless I can make it. At least I don’t have to use it for a few days.

  She was wearing her least conspicuous bra under the silks as she made the buy. Less out of real need than out of the normal tradecraft of reducing conspicuous factors. Obviously it was not enough. She was sure the Asian cashier’s eyes never even flickered above her collarbone.

  Titan Base, Saturday, June 15, evening

  James Stewart stood in front of the glass of his beach picture, trying to get enough of a reflection to make sure his hair was all right. He sure hadn’t been this excited about coming in to work on a Saturday night in a long time. But then, he wasn’t here to work.

  In the silence of the empty headquarters office, he could hear the swish of the front door. The bag in her arms puzzled him briefly, until he remembered that she was supposed to bring dinner. He should have been hungry, but he’d never felt less like eating in his life. Well, not food, anyway. He grinned broadly as she came in and put the bag down on the front desk.

  He reached for her and pulled her against him, one hand pressed into the small of her back, and the other buried in her hair. Her belly was pressed tight against his, her breasts squashed but still soft against his chest. He wanted to screw her now. Right now.

  He tried to pull her back towards his office, or hers, but she wouldn’t go, laughing teasingly.

  “Why not right here?” She patted the top of the desk, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “Or here…” She slid off the edge of the desk and fell back into the chair, spinning in it and laughing.

  He quirked an eyebrow skeptically, imagining how far he’d have to bend his knees for that to work. But she was ahead of him. That, or she’d read his mind, pressing the button that activated the chair’s hydraulics, raising it to its limit.

  As she unsealed the front seam of her silks and shrugged them off her shoulders, he reconsidered. Perhaps it was workable after all. Especially once she lifted her knees and gripped, taking a lot of the weight off his knees. As the rhythm of sex took him over, the brush of her nipples against his chest making him fight for every bit of the control needed to make it last, he promised himself that he’d never question her assessment of what was physically possible again.

  After they fixed Anders’ philodendron, which had somehow gotten dislodged from its terra cotta pot, they ate dinner in Sinda’s office. He didn’t know where she’d come up with an old-fashioned picnic of cold fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, and chocolate chip cookies, but it sure was good. Especially the ice-cold genuine Milwaukee beer, which must have cost her a small fortune.

  Afterward, she seduced him — not that he resisted, of course — on the slimy sonofabitch’s desk. He had to admit he appreciated the irony.

  Sunday, June 16, afternoon

  The smell of her hair was thick in his nostrils as her kisses — interspersed with a few bites to make sure he was paying attention — trailed down his chest. More kiss than bite the farther she went. Finally, she was wrapped around one of his legs, her breasts rubbing against his thigh, nails and body clenched and shuddering against him in ways that showed him that she was having just as much fun as he was.

  The ethereal opening strains of the next song on her cube pierced him with an oddly sweet sadness for a few moments before the hot, driving rhythm kicked in to add to the intensity of what she was doing to him. He didn’t try to remember the name of the band or the song, but it came to him anyway. It was a war-time band called Evanescence, the song, “Bring Me to Life,” and it couldn’t possibly fit their situation, but somehow he knew the music was deeply important to her.

  The vibrance of the music bled onto every sensation, making it more alive — the scent of her, her hands and mouth on him. Her beautiful, pale skin, flushed with sex and luminous with a light sheen of sweat. Even the drab gray of the office walls seemed more intensely real. The music was singing in their bones, and he wondered what in the hell was happening to him. Sex had never been like this.

  The thought wandered through the back of his mind that there was something a little perverse about doing it in a coworker’s office, but it was a small thought, and easily banished. Besides, Li had gotten a couch for his office. Not leather, but a reasonably good substitute.

  Oh, my God…

  Afterward, over a lunch of grinders, his ham and hers roast beef, they talked. He tended to avoid walks down memory lane when talking to her. Well, when talking to anybody, really. No matter how well you knew and believed your cover, there was always the chance of tripping yourself up. One of the things that made Sinda so easy to talk to was that she didn’t try to push their conversations into the past. She was happy to talk about music, or old movies. Okay, so she might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she had this amazing depth to her — and she hadn’t exclusively focused on chick flicks. The really incredible thing was she actually got the best parts. He’d never met another woman who watched the Three Stooges and laughed — really laughed. They’d both liked the scene at the end of one of the old spaghetti westerns where the hero “had a problem with his arithmetic.” Hell, she was the first girl he’d met in twenty years who’d ever watched them.

  The toughest part of this situation was that he couldn’t let himself get involved, no matter how much he might like to. He was living a lie, and there was no telling how her reaction to him would change when she found out the truth. Would she see him as just another opportunist? Would she see him as being like the asshole? Just another predatory juv general? Or could she possibly understand why he’d had to do this?

  Springfield, Sunday, June 16, 5 p.m.

  Bobby Mitchell was good at surveillance, and his skills had only improved since leaving law enforcement. A throwback to a touch of Sioux on his daddy’s side and a hint of Mex on his momma’s, he was a small, slightly nervous man with dark hair, dark eyes, skin that tanned easily, and a talent for blending in with his surroundings, whether people or environmental.

  Bobby maintained his tan very carefully, having noticed early on how disinclined people were to notice a swarthy, average to short man engaged in manual labor.

  Today, he was sweeping a sidewalk a
cross from a park. Bobby’s natural vision hadn’t been all that good, but the damned aliens had some doctors that weren’t too shabby. As he progressed along the sidewalk, he was from twenty to eighty yards from the park bench that allegedly was the enemy dead drop, yet he could clearly make out the features of anyone on or approaching the bench.

  He could have used electronics, of course. And he did have them, as a backup. Still, after seeing just a few of the things his damned alien bosses could do with recorded data, Bobby was a firm believer in the personal touch. He’d never been one to assume the enemy was incompetent or stupid.

  Besides, the mission here was purely confirmation of a tip in advance of a raid.

  He was halfway down the sidewalk sweeping, the second time, when the very average black man with conservative scalp patterns, dressed in a dirty sky blue windbreaker and jeans, sat down on the bench. The face was a dead ringer for one of the four in the tip file, and he admired the smoothness of the man brushing a hand under the edge of the bench under cover of tossing crumbs to the pigeons. You had to admire the artistry. He didn’t even see him read it, and only knew it was probably a note on flashpaper from the slight excess flare as the man lit a cigarette, standing and strolling casually back the way he had come.

  Tip confirmed, mission accomplished. Bobby continued his sweeping all around the square, palming his back-up cameras as he passed them.

  The Fleet Strike puke who picked up their cameras from within the park itself half an hour later was clumsy, wearing civilian clothes that were too carefully sloppy and too new and overacting his casualness, although his sleight of hand was acceptable. Still, it was obvious Fleet Strike hadn’t faced a serious threat from an opposing intelligence force in a long time.

  Too bad he couldn’t count on all their people being that inexperienced. It was probably overkill, but he’d still plan the raid as if they were going to be competent competitors for the prizes.

  After cleaning up the last camera, he disappeared down an alley to his ten-year-old gray sedan, throwing the broom in his back seat. His AID looked like a cheap discount-store brand PDA. He took a moment to call his cousin, “Hey, Johnny. Yeah, it’s me. We’re on for beer and pizza Tuesday. My place.”

  Tip confirmed, raid on schedule, set the wheels in motion. And may we all get nice bonuses out of this.

  * * *

  As he got off the bus, Levon Martin took out the baggy where he’d saved a bit of bread from his sandwich. He tore the bread into crumbs as he walked from the stop to the park.

  It was a beautiful day but a trifle windy. His clothes had the well worn look of the comfortable clothes that a man might wear for a walk on his day off. The air today smelled fresh and green, and he couldn’t help but be cheered a bit by the profusion of dandelions that pushed up between the cracks of the crumbling sidewalks, giving way suddenly to solid concrete and well-tended flower boxes as he turned onto the square.

  In the park in the middle of the square, he found a spot on the left end of the bench that was mostly clear of pigeon droppings and sat, playing out the crumbs to the fat, iridescent birds as they waddled and pecked at the bits of bread and sometimes at each other.

  Somewhere in the middle he managed to palm the flash paper sticky-note stuck to the bottom of the bench. Under cover of crumbling a bit more bread, he tore off the corner of the paper that held a few tiny dots of film that would yield up their data later, under magnification. The rest of the note simply said, “Plus one hour for Joe.”

  He kept it palmed while he finished feeding the birds and disposed of it before he left by the simple expedient of burning it as he lit a cigarette, covered by the flare of his lighter. The baggy with the data dots went into his pocket. Wonder what in the hell Barry has going on that necessitates pushing back the mid-cycle meeting? Not that it matters.

  There were various people in the square or on the walkways this Sunday afternoon, but none of them stood out. There was nothing to distinguish the sidewalk sweeper from any of a couple of dozen other people going about their business in plain sight.

  Martin walked back out to his bus stop, arriving five minutes before the next scheduled pickup at that stop. After a short wait, he boarded his bus and was gone.

  Chicago, Sunday, June 15, evening

  Peter Vanderberg contemplated the young major in front of him, from the slightly long for regulation hair to the precise fit of his silks and liked what he saw. What he primarily liked about David Morrison couldn’t be seen on the surface. Alert, competent, smart. Attentive to detail without getting bogged down and overcome by trivialities. Good delegating authority. All these were reasons for the man to have obtained the exalted rank of major at the unusually young age of thirty-six.

  His 201 file was virtually perfect, as was true of almost all of the new breed of young Fleet Strike officers.

  “So. Now that our intel is confirmed, I expect a finalized operational plan for capture of the targets ready to brief in the participants by eleven hundred tomorrow. You can use my briefing room, since I’ll want to be there. Look at me, David.” He caught the major’s eyes as they dropped slightly to meet his own. “I can’t emphasize enough how important this mission is. Use whatever you need to get it done.”

  “Yes, sir.” He nodded. “My preliminary plan is for a solid team in civilian clothes backed up by a substantial number of uniformed MPs who can be thoroughly concealed and held under radio silence until and unless needed.”

  “Reasonable. Get on it. I’ll see you tomorrow. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.” The about face was clean, but relaxed, confident. Good man. As soon as Stewart was out in the open, he was definitely sending him a mixed case of Havanas and good scotch, and damn the cost.

  Titan Base, Monday, June 17, evening

  “So he didn’t notice that you had your buckley do all those time-wasting reports he wanted?” Stewart had doubled back to the office, since Sinda didn’t have to be at the asshole’s quarters until his wife left at nineteen hundred.

  “Well, he did comment that they were a bit pessimistic.” She trailed a finger down his chest, grinning conspiratorially. “I blamed it on PMS.

  “So,” she took a finger and tapped him on the chest, “we’ve just about exhausted the possibilities of the regular office but you,” she tapped him again, “have access to the locked room off of Beed’s office. Is there any… interesting furniture or anything in there?”

  Her breasts were just barely brushing against his chest, and he could feel her nipples hardening through the thin fabric. Her breath was warm against his jaw line and smelled of cinnamon.

  “Well, there is a recliner back there. And a large vidscreen. I don’t think he wants the rest of the office to know he uses them.” He ran a hand through that silky, bright hair. She had great hair.

  “A recliner? Lead on, Macduff,” she said.

  If she thought she was going to be in the driver’s seat like last night, she was in for a surprise. Not that it hadn’t been fantastic, just, well, they didn’t have a lot of time and he didn’t like why. Oh, it wasn’t her fault at all. Which was why he was in the mood to wring every last bit of sensation from her and leave her sated and limp as a rag doll. The asshole might get her acting ability, but he had her real passion, and he knew it. It was his aim to make her unable to forget it for a second of her sad pantomime with that unfit, corrupt flake who he was more and more looking forward to relieving of command and career.

  The promised recliner was upholstered in a rather hideous green and black plaid. A faded leopard-print pillow scavenged from who knew where was squashed into one corner of it. A couple of other pillows and a red and white blanket with a soft drink logo were piled neatly to the side of the chair. A box of holocubes with the logos of commercial entertainment companies sat by itself on a small end table. The color scheme was the same institutional green and battleship gray of the rest of the office.

  As the door slid shut behind her he pulled her hard against him
, kissing her deeply. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, but a kiss or a touch and he was just gone.

  Now her legs were up around his waist and the drive came boiling up in him. It turned out that the pillows and blanket combined to provide just the right height boost to support her when he bent her over the arm of the chair. He had both hands free, and he could reach everything, and did, as he felt the convulsions begin to take her. Yesterday had been pretty great, but all in all, Stewart preferred to drive.

  He had worked his way through two and was recovered and starting on three, gotta love that juv stamina, when he thought he heard a noise in the outer office. He clapped one hand over Sinda’s mouth, “Shhh!” and they both dived for their PDA’s. She made it first.

  “Buckley, who’s out there?” she hissed.

  “It’s Sergeant Franks! He’ll tell the general and we’re all gonna die!” it whispered back.

  Only Franks. Wonder what he’s up to? Stewart breathed a sigh of relief and put a finger over his lips.

  Sinda nodded.

  He quietly murmured to his AID-in-drag to listen for Franks until he left the headquarters complex. He and Sinda sat very quietly, staring at each other, until it announced softly that Franks was gone and, other than themselves and the MP standing guard in the outer corridor, the headquarters area was now empty.

  “You get damn good performance out of your buckley,” he said.

  “Yeah, so do you,” she observed absently. “Boy that took the mood right away, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but I bet we could get it back pretty quick.” He looked down and shrugged, running a finger up her thigh.

  “We already damn near got caught once tonight. Let’s not make that a certainty, okay?” She stopped his hand with one of her own and grabbed her silks, smiling regretfully.